The last bits
Health you have two different life tracks, one being mental and one being physical. Physical damage is easy to describe, it's how much damage you take from a physical attack, for instance being bucked in the nose or falling off a cliff. There is physical damage and then there is non lethal damage. Lethal damage takes one day to heal two lethal damage where as non lethal after one day you will heal it all in one day. Lethal damage also gives penalties (based off table 4-1) for non lethal damage you half the penalties and that is how much you have. When you fill up on physical damage you go into your physical stress explosion. When you've filled up on non lethal damage you roll over into lethal damage and even if you are taking non lethal damage you treat it as if it is. You can take non lethal damage from small things, for instance failing an endurance—or making extended endurance rolls—would give you non lethal stress. You could also get it from play fighting or even falling off a ladder. Table 4-1 ¼ health -2 dice ½ health -2 successes Healing Normally you heal 2 lethal damage a day, for both mental and physical stress. If you have medical treatment then you heal 4 lethal stress per day, but it is for the specific sort of medical treatment you got, for instance if you received bandages for a broken hoof, you would heal four lethal and two mental stress that day. But wait I don't have that many dice If taking damage means that you have no dice (or negative dice) to do any action then you aren't able to do that action, and you'll need to find another way around. Even if you figure out a really cool stunt that would normally give you the dice you aren't allowed. In a fight: If you are going against another pony, whether it be a battle of wits or a battle of might, the way to determine stress is rolling off. You make your attack, and the other pony makes theirs and whoever wins deals out the stress. You determine how much stress by the difference in your rolls ie if you roll a 6 and your opponent rolls a 5 your opponent would take one stress. Mental stress is much different. For one there is no non lethal mental damage and you can take it from far more sources. Non lethal damage with mental health is not marked off rather it is role played, for instance being manipulated into a social situation your character would just do what the manipulator wants. Now you might be asking, so how do I take mental stress? Well failing extended manipulation rolls against you could grant mental stress. You can also gain mental stress from failing different rolls, for instance failing to do your homework might force you to make a wits roll, if you fail you would take mental stress based on how poorly you failed. Hitting dead ends in a story, or being scorned by loved ones could all give you mental stress. A note for STs: A good rule for determining how much stress a ony is going to be taking is the subtraction rule. First you determine the target number and if the pony fails you determine the difference between their roll and the target number. Then give them the stress just as if they were rolling against another pony. If this makes your game a bit too lethal or if it hurts the story feel free to dull the damage. Stress Explosions At character gen you take two stress explosions, one for physical stress, one for mental. It is possible to take more than one stress explosion. The benefits for taking more than one stress explosion is you can have 5 bonus XP but you can't have more than three stress explosions and you need at least one physical and one mental. If you do have two stress explosions then when it is time to use your stress explosion you choose which stress explosion to do. After going through with your stress explosion you lose all of your stress at the end of it, but are useless whilest your stress explosion is taking place. You must complete your stress explosion to remove all stress, if your stress explosion is interrupted you regain your stress based on time. For instance if your stress explosion is suppose to take a day and 3/4s of the day you are interrupted you only regain 3/4s of your stress. Note on stress explosions interruptions A way to determine how much stress you regain after you've been interrupted is have four different stress explosion times, 1/4s 1/2s 3/4s and final. You, or your ST should mark down when your stress explosion begins, in game, and your ST should keep track over how long your character has been out for so if you're interrupted you can lose the correct amount of stress. Interrupting a stress explosion: You can make a skill roll. at difficult and up, to interrupt a physical stress explosion. Or if you are exploding yourself you may make a roll to interrupt yourself but that is at expert and up. The only way to stop a mental stress explosion is to interrupt it, because they all have to do with being reminded who your friends are. Most mental stress explosions have the duration of, until you gain a friendship point,which is essentially an interrupt. Taking stress during a stress explosion: If you aren't resolving your stress explosion you can actually take more stress! The more stress you take the more time you need to spend on your stress explosion. This can lead to an indefinite stress explosion which results in character retirement. There is no death on screen death in MLP as a general rule. Characters can be retired, assuming you've hit an indefinite stress explosion your character is retired. You may also retire your character during a stress explosion, or if you feel it is their natural time to leave the story. The problem with characters going on and on and on: There is nothing wrong with a character who continues to exist as long as it keeps adding to the story, sometimes a character who added to the story doesn't add too much later. As an ST you should recognize when a character has become useless and be sure to talk to your PC to remind them that their character might not be the best right now. You can have your PC attempt to change their character, subtly, if they are really attached or don't want to change their character you might need to think about changing the story so that all characters are useful. On the other side of this coin, what if a player keeps retiring characters you might want to have a cap on how many characters a player can retire, that you announce from the onset. HP: Your physical and mental stress is based on your skills. Your physical is your endurance +10 and your mental is wits +10. Soak You can have a level of soak based off of knacks, this is how much damage you can take before you actually take any damage. Injury If you have taken damage to called shot areas (ie a Pegasus breaking a wing) you might lose the use of a limb instead of taking minuses. If you lose access to your legs, you lose access to earth pony knacks, wings Pegasus knacks, and horn you lose access to unicorn knacks. You may either to choose to lose access to a limb or your ST can force you into it. Stress Explosions Creating your own stress explosion You can create a stress explosion easily, assume that the stress explosion will take one day and give a brief description of what your character does for a stress explosion. These have to be approved by your ST before you go ahead and take them. Physically Exhaustion Duration: Until you have taken twelve hours of rest AJ episode four. There is no interrupt for exhaustion Fight Duration: 1 hour You need to fight whoever is in the nearby area, and you won't stop fighting regardless of whoever shows up. If there is no one to fight you need to destroy whatever is around, whether it be clouds, barns, trees. You continuously make endurance rolls to continue fighting for every failure roll you take another point of stress. Each endurance roll lasts you ten minutes in game but you don't stop making rolls until you've either been interrupted or you've lost all of your stress. It doesn't matter if you succeed in your fighting rolls but you do need to make them. If you have doubled your fight explosion you pass out for two days. Flight Duration: 3 hours You need to run away, and you need to keep running. It doesn't matter where you are going but you are leaving now! Once again you make endurance rolls, at challenging, to continue running one roll equal to, roughly, ten minutes. And you need to continuously make rolls until you have run out of stress. If you fail two endurance rolls it counts as an interrupt and you stop. Pass out Duration: 1 day You fall asleep, instantly. You sleep until you are woken one day later feeling much better. You can't be interrupted until after ¼ of your sleep time. To wake up a pony who is passed out you need to make a difficult roll. Mental stress explosions Make a friendship problem Duration: Until you have gained one friendship point from everypony in the group or you have solved your problem Whatever it is that you were attempting to do before your stress explosion, you will do it and it doesn't matter who gets in your way or who you hurt to solve it. Effectively, you don't recognize anypony around you and gain a feeling of loneliness. Whilest solving your problem you make appropriate rolls, whenever you fail a roll you take another point of stress. Alone time Duration: Until you have gained a friendship point from at least one pony in the group or a full week You need to run away and hide yourself from everypony. Where you hide yourself is up to you, but your hiding spot needs to be at least within the realm of difficult (needs at least five successes to find you) and if you are found and don't gain a friendship point then you run away and hide in a different location and take another stress. Party time Duration: Until you have gained at least one friendship point Suddenly everything is backwards, you don't think that your friends are your friends anymore and you may have delusions over who is and is not a pony. If your friends show up you won't assume they are your friends, and are instantly hostile towards them. It is substantially more difficult to receive a friendship point, and gaining one friendship point is equivalent to gaining two normally. G3 Duration: Until you have gained one friendship point or have at least eight hours of supervised rest It's too late your perception of reality has changed and you think that you are in the third generation of My Little Pony. Naturally everything looks and acts differently, instead of seeing many of your friends they all look bigger and fatter and have strangely shaped heads. Not only that but they act like the opposite of how they usually act, and talk to you in much simpler to understand language. Naturally gaining friendship points in this state is more difficult because you don't actually know how everypony is acting and so just to break through is going to require a two die stunt, let alone if it'll work. Nerves Duration: Extenuating circumstances (explained below) This stress explosion doesn't mean that you can't do anything, but it means that you won't do anything. When this stress explosion takes place you find a corner and curl up in it and you don't do anything except maybe get a case of the shivers. You can't let on that you have gone over your stress explosion to anypony else. The only way to get rid of the nerves is to do something cool, effectively a three die stunt, or if you are absolutely needed (as in the only pony for the job is you literally). You're going to love me! Duration: until you have gained one friendship point, or something drastic happens. It just has not been your day, all other ponies have been avoiding you, but you won't let that happen, they will love you. You are so determined to make other ponies love you that you go into a psychotic rage which automatically turns on your intimidate until your stress explosion ends. The something drastic would have to be external from the situation (ie a giant explosion, or your friends have just disrupted the grad galloping gala to the extent that the ponies are stampeding out) Tears Duration: you have gained one friendship point What is it that you're even suppose to wallow in? Well you don't know but you are wallowing in it and you won't stop until somepony shows you the way out. The only problem is you won't listen to your friends, they probably put you here. It'll take a true show of friendship to get you to Secrets Duration: your secret has been revealed Something embarrassing has happened to you recently and you won't let anypony know about it, no matter how hard they try to learn. You will go to the greatest of extents to keep your secret, and only when it's revealed can you relax. If nothing embarrassing has happened to you, when you explode you do something embarrassing, something that needs to be kept secret. Inventory You can't always hold onto everything at any given time. It is assumed, when you are in ponyville, that you have access to anything you would need, you need a ball you've got it. When you are out adventuring you can only carry so much. What you can carry, by yourself, is roughly, two large items. Which means you can carry four medium items, or six small items. When you have a saddle this number increases based on the size of the saddle. Improving a character Your pony hasn't been working their tail off for nothing, when you've played the game long enough you'll find that you want to improve your character. At the beginning of a session you will generally be allowed to improve your character using experience, unless your ST specifies otherwise. When it comes to that time you'll need to consult table 4-2 to determine how to buy up your skills. Table 4-2 Element new score x 3 Skill new score Knack : level 1 – 7 : level 2 – 10 : level 3 – 15 : level 4 – 20 When improving your element score you multiply the new score by three. For instance if you want your element to raise from 2 to 3 you would multiply 3 x 3. The total is how much it costs to raise your element. To raise a skill is simple, whatever you want your skill to be is how much experience it costs. For instance if you want your skill to increase to 4 it would cost 4 friendship points. To raise a knack it costs exactly what it says on the table.